Monday, June 28, 2010

The Left Claw has never been a hard core progression guild. We're a guild of people who turned into friends, a group that wants to do decently in terms of downing bosses and seeing what the game has to offer but at the same time is a bit more casual in our approach to raiding.

For last Thursday's raid, Jess was away on vacation or something so wasn't there to run. Knowing this ahead of time, I made the conscious decision that I was going to lead the raid a little more hard core that night. Given that we are in the summer months and with folks off and on, we aren't going to have a ton of time to raid. Thus, when we are raiding, I thought that we could tighten things up a bit more.

Tighten what, you may ask? Well, I mean how fast we clear through to the Lich King. I don't think we have to get militant about raiding, but we could definitely speed things up a bit more. Sometimes the number of consecutive afks and brbs drives me batty. I totally understand that we need them, and some of our folks are dealing with kids. But could we be a bit more efficient with our raiding time? Oh, most definitely.

So as we were zoning in and waiting for the last couple of folks to come in, I said something like :

"We need to clear this shit faster. There will be minimal or consolidated afks tonight. NO phantom afks. There will be no break until after Saurfang, so if you need to go, go now before we start."

Sure folks gave me shit, saying they were grabbing bottles (ewww) or going to grab water before they got in trouble. Despite the joking though, I think folks appreciated it. Yeah, we had afks, but for the most part they were scheduled/announced beforehand (after completing a wing seemed to make sense). And if someone had to go afk some other time, I announced that anyone else that needs to go could go then as well. Consolidated afks! Doooo eeeeet!

Hopefully my raid leading wasn't too annoying. But I will say that we cleared to Sindragosa faster than we ever have before, and I think (or hope) folks appreciated that. We're a more casual guild that is designed more around the carrot. But I think we can bring in a little bit of stick along with the carrot.

On another note, we are still working on good old Lichie-poo as Jess likes to call him. We're at the point now where we're in Phase 3 for varying amounts of time before it all goes to hell in a hand basket. Ugh. Last night we had our best attempts yet, one that went so freakin' close it was exciting to see the progress, yet frustrating to be so close and not get it.

But for you fellow druids, I need some advice. As a tree, what do you do when you get sucked in the Frostmourne? I seem to see and read varying advice on whether healers can just heal Terenas through Soul Rip or whether they must interrupt Soul Rip. The one time I got sucked in, I tried to start out healing then switched to bear to enrage and bash for Soul Rip, but I failed at it. Should I try maiming in kitteh? Do I have to interrupt?

I think a bit of structure concerning AFKs is always good. It makes a ton of sense to AFK after Saurfang, but what we usually do is "schedule" AFKs to long periods of trash clearing where not everyone is essential. The first few pulls in the second wing, some of the pulls before Gunship, etc. As long as it's not both tanks or something, it always works out fine and the AFK'er has a few minutes to take care of business and get back before the next boss.

God...I hear you on the AFK's and brbs. Drives me crazy! And we are pretty strict about ours.

As for healing in frostmourne room:

1) Faction Change so that you have warstomp. (just kidding!)

I was actually thrown into Frostmourne back to back in our 25 man last night, so didn't have warstomp for my interrupt on the second go, and I just healed through it. With the debuff where it is, you can likely just heal through it...but you've got to be really on top of it or you fall a bit behind during the channel. (I will admit that I was worried about not making it up on that second time). Unless I'm mistaken, I believe that he does more damage the higher his life goes.

If NS is up, use it with HT. Otherwise, heal it like you would with Valithria. Full HoTs, and Nourish spam. I also use swiftmend for the burst I get out of it, the faster I heal him, the faster I get to the raid. The channel does a fair bit of damage, but you can still keep on top of it, and get Terenas healed up to full before you run out of time.

I have also read about shifting to bear and bashing, but I have only ever recently been picked to have my soul harvested. Every time I've gone down, I've just healed as fast as I could and made it through on the otherside. I will say, however, that it is easier to get him topped off with my warstomp up than not, and I've never had to interrupt twice, so if you can work out the timing on bash, it might be worthwhile.

However...it might also be worth it to test just trying to heal through it too!

(if you run with Warlocks, toss a SS on your tanks when you make it into that final phase...it's almost as good as a cooldown on the enrage if someone has their soul harvested!).

@Ratters: Yep, I don't think our raid was overly strict or authoritarian or anything. We still had plenty of time to shoot the shit, talk smack, and joke around. It just required a little bit of extra oversight to make sure we just consolidated the afks.

@Rades: Good point about certain trash pulls also being good afk options.

@Beru: Oh! I forgot you taurens have warstomp. I can't decide if I should try to just heal through it or try bash again. I just hate the idea of possibly wiping an attempt because of my fail.

I last did this fight, back when the buff was at 10%, so I don't think it was possible to heal though the frostmourne phase. I turned into a bear and bashed the 1st soul rip. Then I healed Terenas back up. Then I had to turn into a kitty a bit early in order to get some combo points up so I could use the stun on the 2nd rip.

I would suggest just going bear and using stun, it is not hard, and will help you to heal him through it. If you only have to deal with 1 soul rip, then you don't have to worry about kitty. Practice shifting and using 'bash' on mobs for practice, that's what I did.

When I got sucked into Frostmourne, I didn't even know what was happening, so I just started healing. I had absolutely no problem and I didn't interrupt anything.

It might be a matter of gear too though, since I'm doing 10-mans in 25-man gear (almost 6k gearscore). Compare and decide: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Alonsus&cn=Jen

Our afks are semi-scheduled. We start raids at 8 and always have a 5-10 mins break at 9, because the RL has to put her kid to bed. Then we might or might not have a new 5 mins break throughout the raid - usually if someone DC'es or something like that. Our raids are 3h and we're making pretty good progress like that.

It's not just you with the bear-bash fail. I've done it as a moonkin, and it MISSED. (Well obviously I wasn't a moonkin when I did it, I was a bear, but it missed). I had to quickly go cat and do the...other...thing. I always quickly test my bear/cat bars at the beginning of the fight to make sure they're in a really obvious place. The first time I had to do it I failed because I didn't see the cast bar in time. But our guild's resto druid and I do the bear/cat thing now and it's OK, just have to be ready with the one in case your bear doesn't work!

Agreed Beru, I have the warstomp thing working for me. I can't imagine the trouble of trying to bear-bash it as a resto! Ugh.

As for the afks, we're pretty strict about them. If someone goes afk, it's usually of the emergency variety, except for our 15-minute break halfway through the 4-hour raid. If someone really needs to get up and go, it's during trash heading towards a boss that the group can 8- or 9-man.

@Aceral: As Jess pointed out to me last night, as resto I have 0 hit and expertise. I wonder if that is why my bear bash missed. But yes, I think I'll have to practice then quickly shifting into kitteh to maim.

@Jen: I can't quite decide yet if I'm going to try brute force healing through it next time. I just don't want to be the cause of a wipe again. :(

@Vidyala: Well given that I think of you as "Strict 10 man progression healer extradordinaire" (long title I have given you and Kae!), the fact that your bear bash missed makes me feel a bit better. But yes, I have to be quicker with the cat followup I thinks.

@Kae: Ya, I'm a little bit jealous of you taurens' warstomps.

The funny thing about Thursday raid was that the 2 or so wipes we had were on trash because we were either rushing too fast or had some critical folks still afk at the time. :)